Gen Z is lonely. Going back to the office may be the cure for some
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
As if the office grind and general work culture itself isn't one of the big factors why people are lonelier than in the past, to the point of a "loneliness epidemic" (surgeon general's words), and have been such years before Covid and WFH policies...
I’m not saying that mandatory in office is a good thing, but I am saying I think all of you insisting there’s 0 benefit to a regular in-person cadence are either antisocial or heavily biased. It isn’t always “the man” just trying to get his way.
Even more so for new college grads who may have moved for a job and don’t have a strong local social circle.
Source: I am not in a position to care if other people are in an office or not, I’ve just worked everything from sitting at a desk 9 hours a day to no local office at all.
Is there any benefit in mandating that all employees must come into the office X days per week? No.
I'm seeing a absurd amount of Arguments as Soldiers[1] in this space. No one wants to have a conversation. It's always straight into conflict, underlying intentions, etc. No regards for truth seeking.
For some people work life provides a solid identity.
I say "some people" because someone's propensity to strawman.
Today some health professionals recognize loneliness as a comorbidity.
More awareness of X does not mean there is more of X.
Those people need to fix their home life then - not to take refuge to work in denial of their domestic issues. Work is almost optional. Home life is mandatory.
Easier said than done? Sure. But anything else is a sugarpill when you have a serious disease.
[edited after reading]: okay, well nothing new there. Unrelated studies, implied as relevant; studies they claim show connections (maybe? it's vaguely worded) but don't provide links to; quotes from gen-z that don't necessarily mean what it's implied they are saying; the same old drum-banging about having 'mentors' around you to chat with, or having coworkers to go out to lunch with, just proving that those companies aren't doing remote work correctly. Nothing new here worth diving into, at all!
Remember “quiet quitting”? BI articles overwhelmingly had the tone that these lazy workers were gutting businesses.
I think they just write articles to coddle middle management.
"Biden admin launches $45 billion dollar push to transform empty office space into housing"
If you are lonely, go see your friends or go out. You know, the things you can’t do when you commute 2 hours a day.
I don't think I know a single person that has any interest in continuing to work from home. But around here the commute is a 20 minute train ride, and homes are small.
Any chance you're in the USA, in a big house, in the suburbs?
That's not even a commute across whole city, only across about half of it. And majority of the people had the same times. Lucky ones maybe had 30-40 mins.
I know a grand total of zero people, among friends and extended acquaintances, that showed any preference to work from the office when given a choice, irrespective of the commute time.
Make of that what you will.
But I’d say maybe only a quater or less of people I know would be positive about a return to office. (Me excluded, surprisingly)
It’s a pretty low percentage of people because it’s low flexibility for pretty much no benefits unless you’re a special kind of weirdo (myself)
I live a 6 min walk to my office, and like the amenities + chatting.
It is important not to idealise the perfect timing, what it should be if there were no cars on the roads, no traffic jams or the train comes exactly on time. Take a chronometer and measure it every day and you will be surprised by reality. I did it lots of times.
I have been living in big cities around the world and almost everybody spent an hour or so going to work.
I had a small apartments but was living alone and did as much remote work as I could.
This is an important part. The commute represents an obscenely large amount of our lives in time alone - forget sanity - that we give to employers for free. Is it because that's what we're willing to give for a job? Fucking no, of course not: It's because, historically, there was simply no other choice for most jobs, so it just became another part of the bargaining (I'm willing to sacrifice a bigger chunk than you, so I do better in the job market). Removing that has immeasurably improved the wellbeing and quality of life of everybody I know. Even a single hour round-trip (chair-to-chair) every day is a burden when you consider how our society has become so optimized in filling every available hour of the normal citizen's day.
Without that 4-5 hour wasted block of time, I now see my kid/family more, have time for hobbies, socialize with friends and people I actually like (rather than the at-work "performative socialization" with co-workers). Night and day difference.
I remember a few years ago the concept of a 'third place' was a big thing. You have home, work, and a third place (e.g. church, a sports you play with, gym). Now, a lot of people don't even have a second place. WFH has definitely impacted my mental health and my relationship. Obviously it doesn't _have to_ but if you don't have the built-in motivation to get out and do things often enough, you will spend far too much time at home, around the same person, driving yourselves crazy.
Some people need to be 'forced' to do things or they will let life slowly pass them by. When I had to go to the office I got outside, fresh air, walking, talking with colleagues (even if the interactions weren't very deep) and there was a much greater chance I would do something social after work (with friends, not colleagues). Just being part of the hustle and bustle of the city is something I miss greatly. Like I say, obviously you can do all this and WFH, but personally, I find it very difficult.
At the time I thought Covid + WFH didn't impact me all that much. I didn't feel particularly concerned about it although followed the laws/guidance closely. Looking back as we close in on four years since it started, I feel like it actually had a much bigger impact than I realised and a big part of that is the isolation/bad patterns it's easy to slip into with WFH.
>> Sounds like an individual problem
Yes, but there are lots of things that are 'individual problems' for which society operates in a certain way to ensure it functions as well as possible as a whole. It's an interesting discussion.
Ok, but why the debate then? There is no shortage at all of companies who want people back in the office. So if it's horrible for you to work from home, just go to the office. Why try to force everyone in?
I'm prepared to give something of myself to help others. But I don't like the suspicion that this is yet another attempt to reinforce the previous status quo for a benefit that has little do with the ostensible problem.
We've been talking about lonely people for years, even when most of them went into the office. Remote work is an opportunity to do something different. Use your flexibility to find common interest groups rather than befriending the arbitrary set of people you happen to be crammed into a room with. There are lots of ways we can facilitate that.
That's a more interesting discussion than "let's do the same thing".
The period of the industrial revolution until WFH is a microcosm of human existence. We're simply reverting to the norm, rather than doing something new.
I happen to have experienced the exact same thing. Switched to 100% WFH during COVID and never came off it. I fortunately have a family, but the reality is that family requires a lot of chronological investment (homework, dinners, bonding, etc). Previously working in an office was able to fulfill my extra-familial social needs as a human, but without an office it's much harder to make that happen.
I am obviously very glad that I have a family (and was especially glad during COVID), but I do think that family + WFH leaves very little time for traditional social activities.
Gen Z is lonely because many businesses don't give a flying fuck about the people they pay and instead demand insane hours and crazy workloads to leave zero time for personal relationships to happen outside of the office.
What kinds of offices have you been working in that this is a common occurrence?
People go into an office to work, not be part of your dating pool.
It’s like making me come back to the office because you realized that you made better calorie decisions when we went to lunch at Panera together.
I can appreciate how some people have better outcomes in the office but it doesn’t make sense to drag other people back because they are helpful NPCs to some end beyond the work.
I have been WFH since the start of the pandemic, and then later joined a fully remote company that had no offices whatsoever.
Like most people here, I don't miss commuting in the cold or the rain. However, what I do miss is having a human connection with the people I work with. I have found remote to be much more transactional, and consequently isolating.
I am not sure if remote work is for me. I have made many friends from my previous jobs who I still see, despite us all moving on from the companies where we met. I fear I won't have that here, and honestly it's something that I miss deeply.
Two can play this game.
But let's be honest - when I was in my 20s it was the people I met in the office and at work-adjacent activities that fueled the social and romantic aspects of my life. I can't imagine not having those experiences and just dialing-in at 24 or 25 from my Brooklyn neighborhood where I knew nobody and didn't fit in.
Life is different today, there may be way more ways of connecting outside of work, but I'm not sure they are actually drop-in replacements for connecting in the office.
Won't ever happen as long as the powers that be glance enviously at China's 996 (9-6, 6 days/week) culture.
- go to the gym
- volunteer somewhere
- take classes on something you're interested in
- go to community events
these are just a handful of options i just thought of where you can interact with other ppl. filling your social life with a work life isn't the answer.
Moreover, the modern office is built as a Panopticon where isolated workers sit in rows to be observed. You wear headphones and don't talk to other people, because (a) that would cause a disturbance, and (b) any interaction you do have is a "show" for all the other primates surrounding you. There is no privacy, and no ability to form relationships with other individuals.
So tell me, how does this solve anything?
It doesn't.
That word implies a lot of people.
I don't think there's really a crowd there.
Not everything is RTW propaganda. The example here is an account manager, aka someone whose job is to talk to people. HN'ers in their developer caves need not worry about this one applying to them.
The debate is not whether working in the office is or can be beneficial. It is whether return to office mandates are beneficial.
This is beyond stupid.
Maybe, just maybe, spending an hour/2 hours every single day commuting is not your thing and you are much more productive using this time for yourself, like exercising every day.
Maybe you need personal space, controlled by you and not someone else, with the tools you consider necessary.
Maybe you can't stand open offices that some sociopath wants to force you to work on. Or maybe you are have a late biorhythm metabolism and they want to force you into early rising.
Maybe you can run circles around anybody working in the office when you organise yourself.
Maybe you know how to make friends and lovers on your own because you are an adult now, not a kid and know how to care for yourself. Maybe you have family that love to be with, or needs you, like your elders or your kids. Someone will care for them but you will be close.
Then maybe it is not a good idea for you to work on an office. Not a big deal, humans have worked on their own for hundreds of thousands of years.
Lots of managers are scared about that though. It is good news for them if you can't make friends or lovers outside job, because that makes you dependant on them.
It is a good thing for them if you can't manage yourself unless someone is watching you closely, because that makes them necessary.
And is something to be expected. People had been trained for a long time in education to be obedient and dependable. To fit in the office or the manufacturing plant.
Working remotely is not for everybody. But for me certainly it is.